Essays

Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.

A stamp printed in the USA shows Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
essays

Thomas Jefferson’s spirit of scientific endeavour is what America needs today

Now a firm tenet of American romantic popular imagination, Lewis and Clark’s early nineteenth-century expedition, sponsored by Thomas Jefferson, was also a pragmatic one, which led..

David Cowan May 10, 2023
Hilma af Klint's Svanen, 1914.
essays

The Passion of Hilma af Klint

The passion of Hilma af Klint in every sense – sexual, aesthetic, and religious – is the key to her art.

Stephen Kern April 28, 2023
Semiconductor circuit board.
essays

Made in Taiwan: How Developing Countries Can Leverage High Tech

Taiwan’s hi-tech revolution began with a vision – now the small island-state has captured around sixty per cent of the world market in semiconductor chips, used in everything from ..

Lukasz Bednarski April 27, 2023
Hector taking leave of Andromache.
essays

Can Epic Poetry Revive History?

‘Read history, poetry’, urged the historian David McCullough. When combined, as the ancients knew, history and poetry offer an incomparable insight into the human condition.

Michael Auslin April 25, 2023
Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, 1814.
essays

The West’s Lust for Liberty

The love of liberty is not unique to the West but the lust for liberty is.

Christopher Coker April 21, 2023
essays

Hacktivism’s Cold War Turns Hot

Hacktivism's definitive role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict shows that the future of war is already here and it's digital.

Vasileios Karagiannopoulos and Athina Karatzogianni April 17, 2023
Alexander Pushkin statue in Pushkin Square, Moscow.
essays

Taking Pushkin off his pedestal

Too often Russian literature is fetishised. It needs to be liberated. That process should begin with Pushkin.

Thomas de Waal April 12, 2023
Promotional poster for the film, Spartacus. 1960.
essays

Spartacus, history’s nowhere man

Spartacus is a figure who floats between history and allegory, an empty void, like the upper slopes of Vesuvius, where he and his supporters first took refuge, now obliterated by e..

Richard Miles April 11, 2023
A scene of the Chinese campaign against rebels in East Turkestan, 1828.
essays

A most rebellious territory

Xinjiang’s Uighurs live under the heaviest surveillance in the world, victims of a long battle between China and Russia to settle their Central Asian borderlands.

Michael Sheridan April 5, 2023

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